by CA Morgan
“And yet, somehow you lived through it all. How?” Raga managed to ask.
“To this day, I don’t know why or how. I should have been destroyed along with all the rest, but the demon didn’t seem to see me. The blast of its final fury was unable to penetrate some barrier that was around me. Maybe it had something to do with those stone pillars. I have no idea.
“For two days I hung between those cold stones staring out onto that scorched, seared land fighting to not to close my eyes. When I lost to exhaustion, the things I had seen and felt would be in my dreams. Rain came on the morning of the third day and cooled the blistered earth. A great mist rose up and I barely saw my hands over my head. The ropes softened in the dampness and finally I pulled free of them.
“Hanging between those stones fighting fear, hunger, thirst, I vowed my revenge on any and all who command any form of sorcery,” Eris said. The strength and conviction in his voice was coming back.
“Charra-Tir was hardly the one to vent your anger against. She’s a second-level elemental and one of the strongest of those as well,” Raga said.
There was hardly a week or a month that went by without some hideous ritual performed on some unsuspecting wretch by one who sought the power to control men, their nations and fiends bent to their will. Knowing this, Raga couldn’t fault Eris for the hatred he carried in his heart and soul.
“She wasn’t the first, Raga,” Eris said, interrupting Raga’s myriad thoughts. “I can’t even remember the names of all those like that priest, magician, sorcerer, whatever you want to call him that I’ve destroyed. I will destroy them before they have the chance to kill innocent people and bring the world crumbling down on us all.
“As much as I fear them, I will fight the fools until my dying day. Their greed and hunger for power blinds them to the fact that they can’t control the mighty forces they try to bring here. I’m not even sure you could,” Eris said.
Raga realized that in some cases he might actually be right. He also realized he was hearing a certain conviction, a return of vibrancy in Eris’ voice. Rising from the pits of his hellish memories, his courage and will to overcome was apparent and the warrior who was Eris Pann stirred back to life. It seemed to Raga that even that took no small amount of effort, as the dark memories were subdued once more. Yet the enigma of the fierce man beside him remained mostly unsolved.
Raga now understood what fueled Eris’ fears, but the question as to why and how he had survived remained. He supposed the carved stones might have had something to do with it, but he wasn’t convinced. He wondered what power dwelled in the recesses of Eris’ mind to drive him to exact his particular form of vengeance.
The name Riza, despised lord of the Seven Hells, came to mind. He remembered the sensation of the evil lord’s presence within Eris, when he probed for the cause of his sudden illness in Reshan. Riza, though a true demon and not an elemental, more or less aligned himself with the elementals and Raga didn't think Riza would necessarily approve of the whole-scale extermination of lesser practitioners of the arts even though some rightly deserved it.
No matter what the answers were, no man could live through that and not be changed.
“Now you know my darkest secret,” Eris said. He picked up his bowl and handed it to Raga. He tossed the cold food aside and gave him warm from the pot. When Raga handed the bowl back, he noticed for the first time the multitude of tiny, white lines and nicks of scars that marked Eris’ sword hand; the powerful hand of a professed enemy that he now more clearly understood.
“So will you seek to have my blood too, when or before this is over?” Raga asked.
“In deepest honesty, I can’t say no, yet at the moment it would serve no purpose. The gods know you’ve given me plenty of reason. I'm hesitant, but—”
“Never mind. Sorry I asked,” Raga interrupted. It was the answer he expected and he shouldn’t have dared to think it would be different, especially now. Yet there was a part of him that felt compassion stir and knew that if a single strand of a spider’s web held their alliance together, it would be enough.
“I’m not entering the Vale, Raga,” Eris announced and swallowed the last bite of dinner. “The name alone brings the smell of death to me. How can I make you understand, except to say remember what you’ve just seen? Imagine yourself in that nightmare.”
“Truly, Eris, I felt and on some level understand your fears, but as long as you are with me, nothing will happen to you. After all we’ve done and gone through, how can you want to give up now? In the morning, after you’ve had a good rest, I think you’ll feel differently,” Raga said.
“You don’t understand. I don’t want to give up. I’m still cursed, so I can’t give up. I just can’t go into the Vale. It will be like walking back into that nightmare. How can I survive that again? Every time that madness comes upon me I think I will never be sane again,” Eris explained. His breath caught in his throat.
“But you have kept your mind and you are strong in body. With me, you will walk in and out of the Vale as though it were any other place,” Raga encouraged. “I can even lessen the horror of that memory so that it will only seem unpleasant and not reduce you to a state of terror, but I need my gems to do it.
“I need them to live. You see yourself how every day my power lessens. Who knows what will happen when it has dissipated completely out of my control. Maybe I will explode like that demon, only this time you won’t be able to escape. You need the power of the stones to defeat Charra-Tir. We need each other. Neither of us can do this alone.”
Eris sat quietly and for a long time considered Raga’s words. He pulled and twisted them every way possible in an effort to come up with a convincing argument, but in the end, he couldn’t. He sighed and leaned back against the tree. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands across his weary face and through his raven hair. He clasped his hands behind his neck.
“Fine, I’ll go. I’m tired of arguing with you and will see this through to the end. I have nothing more to lose. I’ve cheated death more than once, and it must be tired of losing by now. Death… you never quite forget… the smell of it,” he mumbled, exhausted, as sleep came over him.
Chapter 7
Avatar
“Looks like trouble ahead, Raga,” Eris shouted and finally saw the source of the black smoke he’d watched for leagues on end. He twisted in his saddle to see Raga still at the bottom of the grassy slope he had just ridden up. His horse pranced nervously beneath him.
“What kind of trouble? We passed the last town on this road a few days ago. There shouldn’t be anyone out here,” Raga shouted back. He prodded his horse, but it was no use. The beast was tired and so was he.
With grim, driving determination Eris had pushed man and beast alike hard for the last four days to arrive at the Red Vale. For someone who didn’t want to come, he was definitely in a hurry.
When Raga crested the slope, his horse needed no signal to stop and hung its head in weariness. Raga let his gaze sweep across the grassy plain to where red-orange flames flickered and consumed dry-looking, pale-green grass and sent up a thick layer of black smoke.
“That’s not trouble, Eris, that’s home,” Raga said with a relieved smile. Eris frowned at him. “Well, for me anyway. I didn’t think we were so close. I don’t usually arrive by way of horseback.”
“Looks more like a grass fire to me,” Eris said. He had only heard stories about the appearance of the Vale, but had never actually seen it.
“No, that’s the Red Vale,” Raga assured.
“Then why does it look like that? What does it burn?” Eris asked. He dismounted to stretch his cramped legs. His hand rested heavily on the pommel of the plain sword that had saved his life more than one. The jeweled Tamori sword was carefully wrapped and tied to the saddle, but still within easy reach.
“Are you sure you want to know the answer to that?” Raga asked. He dismounted, stumbled with weariness and sat down hard on the ground. He plucked a long blade
of yellow grass and put it in his mouth. He suppressed a smile as he sensed the elemental magic in the delicate stem. Yes, it was home.
“Yes,” Eris answered with steely determination. “I want to know everything about that place.”
“Know your enemy, eh?”
Eris said nothing. He drew out his sword and sat on the ground next to Raga. From out of a small leather pouch attached to the sword’s sheath he took a small vial of oil and a whetstone, which he applied judiciously to the blade.
After every few strokes with the stone, he paused to gaze on the land that no mortal man dared enter. It was a place that burned, but consumed nothing. It was a place where whirling vortices from the void of the sky touched the gentle earth, but didn't tear it apart; where everything seemed a paradox. The place where a great, cosmic collision had occurred and ended the former age of man and elements and the cycle began all over again, at least according to the old men who studied such things.
Raga felt invigorated by the sight of his home, and the few grassy stems he’d chewed. He tossed aside the last blade and spoke.
“The Vale only has the appearance of being a mass of towering flames. That keeps the curious out. To walk through the Vale wall is no different than walking across the border into another country.”
“Except that there you walk through the gates of hell,” Eris murmured. The rasp of the stone further muted his words.
“Did you say something?”
“No.”
“The black you see near the top is where the dark voids of the sky attach to the land to keep us from drifting away from our moons, when we can’t see them in the daylight,” Raga said. Eris paused and gave him an odd look.
“Where did you come up with that?” he asked. “I’ve never heard that before and I’ve heard plenty of theories while standing guard in the courts of quite a few noblemen and kings. Most of them say the black places are voids, or tunnels, that connect us to other places or planes of existence. That these are the pathways by which demons come into this world, when they aren’t helped along by a madman.”
Raga shrugged.
“I was trying to convince you otherwise, but have it your way. It really isn’t as sinister as it appears,” he said.
“Speak for yourself,” Eris said and avoided looking at the blackness that darkened as the sun set.
“Don’t worry. Even with those portals standing open to whatever is or isn’t out there, we are still quite safe.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because only once in my many years have I ever known of anything coming through there. When it did, the Warder Mists either destroyed it or managed to send it back. I don’t remember which. It was too long ago,” Raga answered.
“That’s what the mist will do to me. What business have I in that place?” Eris asked.
“The mist won’t harm you. It will understand that you’re with me and you may not even see it, if it doesn’t want to show itself. You know, from out here the Vale looks like a relatively small place, but inside, it's almost boundless. Once, when I was much younger, I tried to ride from one end to the other, but I never got there,” Raga said.
“You were probably drunk on that wine of yours and riding in circles,” Eris said, but there was no humor in his voice. “So, when do we enter this home of yours?”
“The sooner the better. Tomorrow, after we’ve eaten and had a rest,” Raga answered.
“Fine,” Eris said. He wiped an oiled rag along the length of his sword until it reflected the flames of the Vale like fires of war and siege. He would be ready. He would greet the death that he knew awaited him there with sword in hand and a curse on his lips.
In the darkness of night, the Vale glowed and cast eerie lights and shadows across the fields. The wall of the Vale pulsed and writhed and it seemed as if the shadows of wraiths and otherworldly specters moved along its wall.
Sleep didn’t come easily to Eris and he was awake long after Raga had given into the weariness of the road. He sat watching flames that didn’t burn, while Raga snored peacefully at his side. He noticed that the reddish hue of the sorcerer’s beard seemed to flicker and follow the changing patterns in the Vale’s wall. He wondered just what sort of place it was that the elemental of fire called home. He thought about his own homeland that lay farther to the west and wished he could see it one more time.
At last he stretched out onto the grass with one hand behind his head and the other wrapped lightly around the hilt of his sword. He looked up at the twinkling stars and he realized that for the first time in a long time he actually felt a moment of peace even in spite of things being as they were. He wondered if Raga had anything to do with his unusual state of mind or if Charra-Tir’s spell on him was growing stronger. It wasn’t any influence of Raga’s he decided and smiled with a bit of amusement. Raga couldn’t even start a fire to warm their evening meal and he very nearly burst with impatience as he watched him fumble with stone and flint. No, Raga was nearly powerless, yet by eventide tomorrow there was every possibility that he would once again be the formidable Raga-Tor, elemental sorcerer and not Raga, the sometimes fool.
Even that, Eris noticed, didn’t seem to concern him overmuch at the moment. He was tired. He wanted to forget. He wanted to be done with this quest that had turned into one ordeal after another. A part of him didn’t care about the quest or the curse any more. He just wanted to lie under the stars and be left alone.
“I must be losing my mind to think such things,” he grumbled after a while.
He rolled over and reached behind to grab a blanket as the chill of night began to fall. As he rolled back around, his gaze stopped on Raga’s face. Something made him pause to study the man’s ruddy features; bushy brows, a nose that looked a little flat, and a mouth that was lost somewhere in the mass of fire-lit whiskers.
As he stared and studied, a thought crossed his mind. After all this time, after all that had happened along the road and arriving at this point, and with what could very possibly happen come morning, Eris realized that Raga owed him nothing.
He supposed that in one sense Raga owed him for just being there as his curse counterbalanced the spell on the stones, but what did an elemental care about a mortal being anyway? Which, if any, of them did? None that he had ever heard about.
Or perhaps, they would find themselves at an impasse, as he was still unsure about giving back the green stone. He supposed he could wait until Raga became weaker still and then wrest the other two away at least long enough for him to break Charra-Tir’s hold. But, that could be a long time and without Raga’s help, he might never find his way out of the Vale. He felt they were headed for a stalemate and just who would trust who?
Those thoughts were finally enough to put Eris into his usual state of unrest and disturbance. They encouraged a mood of volatile intemperance to rise within him and to lie just beneath the thin veneer of arrogant indifference. Thus soothed and put back in order, he finally fell asleep.
The wall of the Red Vale soared into the pale-blue morning sky. Writhing red vapors flowing out from the wall seemed to challenge the courage of the two approaching riders. It forced them to acknowledge and behold its enormous power as its manifestation roiled defiantly on the open plain. It was almost overpowering in the way it forced the mind to recognize the magnitude of power contained in the fiery wall, yet it was a fire that didn’t burn and gave off but a little heat.
Eris looked up at the sky. It turned hazy as errant wisps of black smoke that was not really smoke drifted out onto the turquoise field. Thicker and thicker it grew until the blue faded to gray and deepened to black. He looked behind at the way they had come. The road was distorted by waves of shimmering heat. The grass was yellowed and looked even more parched and starved for a single drop of precious water. It was all illusion. There was no heat and the grass had been wet with dew.
“Stay close to me, Eris,” Raga warned when he noticed Eris had let his horse wander a bit as he stared beh
ind. “In just a bit we will be out of the barrier region and then we will see what part of the Vale we are in today.”
“What do you mean by what part today?” Eris asked. He didn’t like the sound of that caution.
“This is a place of unpredictability. Sometimes, something that wasn’t in a particular place the day before is and something that was, isn’t,” Raga answered.
“If you say so,” Eris said. His mind reeled at the convoluted sentence and he looked at Raga as though he was crazy. That was nothing new; nothing that wasn’t there the day before.
“Now that I think about it,” Raga mused, “the Vale wall really is the safest place to be. We must be on our guard every moment after we leave it.”
“I thought you said your home was here. How can you live wherever it is that you do and have to remain ever vigilant that it won’t attack you?” Eris asked. The waves of shimmering flame and orange mist lessened and he began to see the land of the Vale.
“I don’t think that is something you need to know. Perhaps I will explain it to you some day, when I am comfortably sitting in your home. A time when you are far away from here,” Raga answered.
“Don’t count on it, sorcerer,” Eris said in a tight voice. He felt tingling apprehension ripple through his body. His hand rested heavily on the pommel of his sword, but that did little to pacify him as the wall was now behind them and the land of the Red Vale stretched to the horizon.
It was a rugged land. Pinnacles of red sandstone loomed on the horizon like giant lances warning the black voids to keep their unwanted creatures out. As far as Eris could see, it was desolate and barren. It was a place of red rock, clay and sand. A place where valleys and ravines, gouged and broken in bizarre ways, seemed to have been formed by the clawed talons of monstrous demons grasping for the precious gem that was the earth.
